Nokia reports heavy loss

Nokia reported net sales of EUR 7'542 million; down 19% from EUR 9'275 million in 2Q/2011. Operating loss improved sequentially to (minus) EUR 826 million; from (minus) EUR 1'340 million in 1Q/2012. Compared YoY, operating loss worsened from (minus) EUR 487 million. Its net cash at the end of the quarter was EUR 4.2 billion, compared to the market's forecast of EUR 3.7 billion. Nokia sold 4 million Lumia phones with Microsoft's Windows software during the quarter, in line with the market's forecast. Mobile Phones Q2 volumes increased quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year to 73 million units. Commenting on the Q2 results, Stephen Elop, Nokia CEO, said: "Nokia is taking action to manage through this transition period. While Q2 was a difficult quarter, Nokia employees are demonstrating their determination to strengthen our competitiveness, improve our operating model and carefully manage our financial resources." We shipped four million Lumia Smartphones in Q2, and we plan to provide updates to current Lumia products over time, well beyond the launch of Windows Phone 8. We believe the Windows Phone 8 launch will be an important catalyst for Lumia. During the quarter, we demonstrated stability in our feature phone business, and enhanced our competitiveness with the introduction of our first full touch Asha devices." "In Location & Commerce, our business with auto-industry customers continued to grow, and we made good progress establishing our location-based platform with businesses like Yahoo!, Flickr, and Bing. We continued to strengthen our patent portfolio and filed more patents in the first half of 2012 than any previous six month period since 2007. And, we are encouraged that Nokia Siemens Networks returned to underlying operating profitability through strong execution of its focused strategy." "We are executing with urgency on our restructuring program. We are disposing of non-core assets like Vertu. We are taking the necessary steps to restructure the operations of the company, which included the announcement of a new program on June 14. Faster than anticipated, we have already negotiated the closure of the Ulm, Germany R&D site, and the negotiations about the planned closure of our factory in Salo, Finland are proceeding in a collaborative spirit."